AJIRN 2017- Program

Discussion around agency has accumulated in significant research and commentary about jazz and improvisation – particularly in terms of aesthetics, culture and cognition. The thrust of the discussion seems to have moved from assuming the musician has singular agency in his or her work to a more distributed agency where other agents collaborate to create music.

In this conference, a cross-section of researchers from the field will explore the notion of agency in jazz from multiple perspectives, including:

the consequential and inter-related impact of diverse and dynamic agents on creativity and innovation in improvised and experimental jazz;

how agency is articulated in the analysis of performance/composition, including for example, identifying methods of analysis appropriate to a particular modality;

articulating and accommodating sociological concepts of agency, such as maintaining allegiance to localities in globalised, post-diasporic jazz;

how agents and agencies are characterised in performance experimentation;

the utilisation of agents and agencies external to the composer, performer and performance; and

the contrasting frameworks of musicologists and experimental performers/composers in relation to agency.

Day 1

Opening Reception

5:00 – 6:30pm

Paris Cat, 6 Goldie Place, Melbourne, Australia

Day 2

Time

Loft (Upstairs)

Downstairs

9:00

Registration

9:15

Introduction

Session 1

Session 2

Agency – Environment

Jazz Scenes

9:30

Sam McAuliffe

Improvising in the Open: Place and Agency

Ben Phipps

Social Organisation and the Musical Practices of Jazz Bass players in Sydney, Australia

10:00

Mace Francis

Trio: Musician; Composer; Site

John Fitzgerald & Adam Simmonds

Collaboration Across Improvising Genres: Genre Crossing in an Australian Performing Musician Network

10:30

Jonathan Day

Genius Loci

Dave Wilson

Making the Jazz Scene in Macedonia: Historiography, Labour, and the Unevenness of Knowing the World through Sound

11:00

Break

Break

Session 3

Session 4

Enabling Agency

Integrating Creative Process

11:30

Jordan Murray

Rehearsal Strategies for the Enhancement of Agency in Spontaneously Improvised Music

Andy Sugg

Agents of Change: The Saxophone after Trane

12:00

Charles MacInnes

How do you Want me to Play That: Agency in the Improvising Contemporary Classical Art Music Ensemble?

John Mackey

An Extended Application of the Pentatonic Scale in Jazz Improvisation – Proposal of a New Modal Concept

12:30

Rod Davies

Towards a Practice-based Methodology for the Investigation of Agency within the Vocal Booth

Tom O’Halloran

Edit Bunker: a Case for Innovation in Jazz Through Agency of Digital/Moving Image

1:00

Lunch

2:00

Performance

Session 5

Agency in Performance

2:30

Robert Burke

Mapping Agency in an Improvisational Setting

3:00

Paul Williamson

How Can Re-Interpretative Decisions Contribute to Agency Within Jazz Performance?

3:30

Break

Session 6

Agency in Artistic Research Performance

4:00

Fiona Burnett

Agency in Twenty First Century Improvisation:Freedom and Restraint the Duality within Artistic Practice of the Performer- Composer

4:30

Nicole Canham & Karlin Love

Improvising a Life After Research: Making Things Happen or Letting them Happen?‪

Session 7

Session 8

Post Graduate Papers

Post Graduate Papers

5:00

Danilo Rojas

Practice and Research of the Cueca to Jazz and Improvisation

Alfredo Lopes

Jazzing: Intuition and Intellect

5:20

Dan Sheehan

The Improvisational Etude: A Model for Creative Practice

Nick Freer

Music Analysis, Ontological Paradigms and Semiological Principles of Conflation/Progression

5:40

Greg Stott

Thinking Like a Drummer: A Work in Progress for Guitar Improvisation

Tim Willis

The Development of Manipulative Aural Skills in Improvising Musicians via Mental Practice during Performance

Preparation

6:00

Close

Day 3

Time

Loft (Upstairs)

9:00

Coffee

Session 9

Agency – Environment

9:30

Leon de Bruin

Meta Cognition and Distributed Creativities in Improvised Music Making

10:00

Roger Dean

Agency and Leadership in Keyboard Duo Improvisation

10:30

Bruce Johnson

Bringing Up The Bodies: Cognitive agency in jazz

11:00

Break

Session 10

Questioning Agency

11:30

Andrys Onsman

To Express Yourself: Agency and Identity in Improvised Experimental Music

12:00

Sage Harlow

The Illusion of Free Will and Its Implication for Improvising (and Invocation)

12:30

Vincent Giles

Determinism and Creative Freedom in Improvisation

1:00

Lunch

2:00

Performance

Session 11

Individual Agency – Australasian Context

2:30

Andrew Robson

Stompin’ the Austral Blues: McGann, Evans and Simmonds as Agents of Change